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Olbrechts] the swimmer MANUSCRIPT 127
Should the father be anxious to have another baby after one year
he only crosses one mountain ridge, and should he want a child again
only three or four years from then, he crosses the same number of
ridges.
While the father is on this errand he should be carefid that nobody
watches him, for should anybody want to harm him they will stealthily
follow him, and when he has gone, either
(1) Dig up the placenta, bury it an arm deep and put four or seven
stones on top of it before filling the earth in again. As a result of this
action, never again will a baby be bom to the victims.
(2) They can dig up the placenta and throw it away in the open.
In this case a child is liable to be born to these people just any
time; in any case before the parents wish this to happen.
The mother remains in a recumbent position for two to three days,
or even less. After that, if no complications have set in, she is up
and busy. In spite of the fact that she is supposed to be under
restrictions for 12 or 24 days,^^ she attends to quite a munber
of her household duties. But she abstains from cooking, nor has she
anything to do with the preparation of food, as anybody partaking of
a meal prepared by her would become dangerously ill.
She should not eat any fish the first couple of days after delivery,
"because fish have cold blood, and they would therefore chill the
blood that has still to come out of her, and would cause it to clot."
Nor should she take any hot food, or any salt. (See p. 121.) During
this taboo period the woman is as dangerous as during her pregnancy
or her catamenial periods.
The child is still now often given its name by one of the prominent
old women of the settlement; possibly it used to be the chief woman of
the clan who had the privilege of bestowing names on newly born
infants, but this rule no longer obtains. As was pointed out in the
previous pages, the child may be given its name even before it is bom.
In those cases where partus is difficult a name is bestowed on the child
so as to have something "material" by which to exercise an influence
upon it.
Old informants remember that in times gone by a child was endowed
with its first name four or seven days after its birth. Mooney has
left us a description of the ceremony in his "Cherokee River Cult,"
Journal of American Folk-Lore, 1900, page 2.
To this first name another name could be substituted later on;
this name, that usually clung definitely to the individual for the rest
of his life, was usually descriptive of one of his physical or moral
*3 One informant told me that he had heard that the usual taboo of 24 days
could be reduced to 12 by drinking a decoction of certain simples. He did not
know which ones, though.
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